The National Archives organizes a training course on best practices in government entities’ document inventory



Having signed a memorandum of understanding with Ministry of Justice recently, the National Archives held a  training course entitled Government Entities’ Documents Inventory for the ministry’s employees. The MoU aims to enhance collaboration in areas which support both parties’ missions and work jointly to organize the ministry’s archives. The training course represents the National Archives’ contribution to setting up a model integrated system for the Ministry of Justice both paper and electronic archives as well as applying an integrated document management policy, enhancing skills in paper and electronic document conservation and developing qualified archive cadres.





The training course which was delivered remotely by the archiving expert, Ahmed Mujib, dealt with the archive document, the process of inventorying documents produced and received in a government entity, determining  their conservation places and preparing the relevant lists. He pointed out that this procedure is conducted regularly at the end of each year to identify the numbers, types and conservation locations of document.

The training course defined the objective of the document inventory process in compliance with the legal requirements set by the Federal Law on the National Archives No. (7) of 2008, amended by Law No. (1) of 2014 and its executive regulations. This process seeks to inventorying files and documents in the sites of the government entities, preparing lists of files in all organizational units to be able to check their integrity, and using lists to search for documents and control the process of viewing them.



The training course dealt with the articles of Law No. (1) of 2014 and its executive regulations, which dealt with organizing and conserving documents at government entities. It also reviewed pictures of scattered archives in some stores and the methods of putting files in archive boxes and placing them on shelves, in addition to pictures of the archives on shelves or in cabinets, and the sequential numbering of boxes or files regardless of their content or source.

The training course, in which a large number of employees of the Ministry of Justice and National Archives participated, also dealt with preparing for the document inventory process by identifying the required inventory locations, preparing posters to number sites, shelves and cabinets, placing posters in the appropriate spot, and then recording the inventory data. Besides, it outlined the requirements for regulating and implementing document inventory at government entities.



It is noteworthy that the National Archives has drawn up a plan to spread  archival culture among government entities. Thus, it organized many awareness workshops for government entities about the work actions related to managing current and intermediate documents and organizing paper and electronic archives. Additionally, the awareness workshops dealt with many other topics such as document inventory, document and archive transfer, document destruction, document classification, preparation of filing plans, document conservation and availability, and many electronic archiving issues.



The National Archives also organizes awareness workshops for archives officials, highlighting the importance of managing files in government entities in a scientific method, in accordance with the UAE’s laws. Moreover, the National Archives’ specialized teams make field visits to organize the archives of the local government entities, and the National Archives also provides free consultations and other services to public and private entities.



The National Archives

The National Archives of the Ministry of Presidential Affairs was first established in 1968 upon the directives of the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, with the aim of collecting documents and information relating to the history and heritage of the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf region. Forty years later, HH Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE President, issued Federal Law No. (7) of 2008 changing its name to be the National Center for Documentation and Research (NCDR), and assigning it to organize the archives of the various UAE government entities. In 2014, HH Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan issued Federal Law No. (1) of 2014, which changed its name to the National Archives.